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| This requested video comes from Alan, who asks that I expound upon the topic of long-haul driving. | |
| He actually had one specific question regarding sleeping at the side of the road, but I think there's a number of other topics that are connected to this as well, so let's just do all of them since I can do this off the top of my head. | |
| Now, the very first principle, if you are doing a long-haul drive across the country, you need to be serious about this. | |
| What are you doing? | |
| You are driving. | |
| You know, this is not a summer trip with mom, dad, and the kids where you stop every hour or two for a pee break. | |
| If you are going to be long-haul driving, then you need to discipline yourself to actually drive. | |
| The only time you should be stopping and use the washroom is when your car needs more fuel. | |
| You can easily waste half an hour at a roadside stop. | |
| And that is, that's 30 miles. | |
| That's 50 kilometers. | |
| That's another half hour you're adding to the tail end of your journey. | |
| If you're going to be driving, you need to be serious about it. | |
| Do not take breaks. | |
| You know, get yourself a big coffee, get yourself something you can eat while you're driving, and then get back on the road and keep moving. | |
| You know, if you're only going to be alert and awake for so many hours, if you waste some of that time sitting at a roadside stop, well, you're not going to get there. | |
| Now, obviously, take breaks if you need them, particularly in bad weather. | |
| Like I was driving through the snow apocalypse and it took me about eight hours to move 150 miles. | |
| And that's just because the weather was so bad, you know, that first of all I wasn't doing very fast on the highway, but also I was taking plenty of breaks just because of the amount of attention that was required just to drive safely was a lot. | |
| So if you need to take breaks, take breaks, but don't take breaks because you're lazy. | |
| Now, following from that, speeding. | |
| If you're driving for six to 12 hours straight, going about 10 miles over the limit, that is a huge difference at the end of the day. | |
| You can more than cancel out all of your gas stops if you are serious and disciplined and you go a little bit over the limit. | |
| Now I generally find in most states you can safely do 10 over the limit. | |
| You know, maybe even 15 in some places. | |
| One exception is Texas. | |
| If you're driving through Texas, I would not do above more than five over the limit. | |
| Set the cruise control there and just let her go. | |
| Now when you're driving over the limit like this, you should be basically faster than 99% of the traffic that you see. | |
| For every 100, for every 99 cars that you pass, one maniac should pass you. | |
| Then you know you're in that sweet spot. | |
| You're not the craziest driver on the road, but you're still, you've got an edge on just about everybody else. | |
| If you see a cop at the side of the road, or rather when you see a cop at the side of the road, because you will if you're driving for long enough, your first instinct is going to be to hit the brakes and slow down. | |
| Do not do this. | |
| That makes you look guilty. | |
| See the cop has already clocked how fast you're going. | |
| They've already got their radar. | |
| As soon as you see, the radar sees you before you see the cop. | |
| So you've already been caught. | |
| The crime isn't going to get any worse. | |
| So if you see the cop, do not slow down. | |
| Pure psychology. | |
| It makes you look guilty if you slow down. | |
| The cop is more inclined. | |
| If he sees your brake lights hit, you look like, oh, I feel guilty. | |
| I was doing something wrong. | |
| It pisses him off, makes him want to pull you over. | |
| Don't hit the brakes. | |
| Just keep doing what you're doing. | |
| And as long as it's a reasonable amount that you're doing over the limit, you shouldn't have any problems. | |
| I never have. | |
| If you do get pulled over, however, and seriously, I can't emphasize this enough. | |
| If you get pulled over by a cop for speeding, be polite to the guy. | |
| 90% of speeding tickets are asshole taxes. | |
| If you act like a mouthy idiot, if you start being rude to him, then yeah, he's going to give you a ticket just for being a jerk. | |
| If you're polite and respectful, you call him officer or sir. | |
| You know, you don't admit everything. | |
| Like, when you speak to the cops, never give them information that they don't already have. | |
| Never volunteer information. | |
| Because again, they're not your friend. | |
| You know, officer-friendly is something that disappeared 50 years ago. | |
| So don't ever mistake a cop for officer-friendly. | |
| But at the same time, the majority of them, they are decent guys. | |
| We just have a really screwed up legal system. | |
| So if you're polite, if you are civil, they will likely let you off with a warning. | |
| All right, so the next part. | |
| Sleeping at the side of the road. | |
| One thing that is absolutely maddening is spending the money on hotels and motels when you're traveling. | |
| I don't like doing it. | |
| It's an unnecessary luxury. | |
| I'm just sitting in the car. | |
| You know, it's not like I've been doing manual labor. | |
| It's not like I stink. | |
| I can go a couple of days without a shower. | |
| And it's not like I'm going to be appearing in public or anything like that. | |
| Why would I possibly pay, you know, 50 or 100 bucks for a hotel room? | |
| Yeah, I absolutely hate doing that. | |
| But unfortunately, it's not the 1850s anymore. | |
| There's an HBO series, I think it was HBO, the Hatfields and McCoy's, where one of the young men with the feud going on between the two families just gets sick of it and says, you know what? | |
| I'm done. | |
| I'm moving to Oregon. | |
| And he just jumps on his horse and he leaves. | |
| And where is he? | |
| He sleeps on the ground, wherever he wants, until he gets to Oregon. | |
| We don't live in those days anymore. | |
| The thing is that if you're at the side of the road sleeping in your car, you look very suspicious, particularly since your license plate is probably out of state or out of province. | |
| You know, as you're driving, hey, there's decent odds that if you're driving, I had this several times when I was in New Jersey, you'll get a cop that notices that you have an out-of-state plate, and they'll just pull up behind you, and they'll run your plate to see if it's a stolen vehicle or to see whatever. | |
| You know, you look suspicious with these plates. | |
| So, when you're driving across country, and you've got this suspicious plate, and you're stopped at the side of the road, and you know, who knows, maybe you drove until 2 a.m. | |
| So it's 10 in the morning, all the civilized people are already at work, and here's this lazy vagrant sleeping at the side of the road. | |
| You know, you look heat when that happens. | |
| And so, generally, it is safer if you can afford it, to get motels, because nobody bugs somebody that's staying at a hotel or a motel. | |
| The fact that you can afford it shows that you're not a vagrant. | |
| It shows that you didn't steal the car, etc. | |
| You know, that might not actually be true realistically speaking, but psychologically, guy staying at a hotel versus guy sleeping at the side of the road. | |
| Who's going to get harassed first? | |
| But if you don't want to stay at the hotels, which I fully endorse, you've got a couple of options. | |
| The first is roadside turnoffs. | |
| These are mainly used by long-haul truckers. | |
| And it's, I know it's ironic that being pulled over the side of the highway looks suspicious, but being pulled over to the side of a rest area doesn't. | |
| I mean, the same thing, really, at the end of the day. | |
| But if you're there with the truckers, you're also hidden by the large trucks, you're just a person that's moving across the country, or you're just whatever. | |
| You're a professional. | |
| This is what you're doing. | |
| You just have a really long drive. | |
| People leave you alone. | |
| Most states in the United States have welcome centers at the edge of each state. | |
| So as you cross the state line, there'll be signs saying welcome center in three miles. | |
| And it's got some vending machines, it's got tourist information about everything, but also has places that you can park for the evening. | |
| So that's another solution, stopping at one of those. | |
| But the third situation, and this is what I ran into when I was in Texas, is I couldn't find any roadside turnoffs for semi-drivers. | |
| And it happens to be a very, very large state, it turns out, even though the way the map is shaped, it doesn't look that big. | |
| So what do you do in that case? | |
| Now, if you pull over the side of the highway, everyone's going to see you. | |
| You know, everybody that drives past, you know, there's that car at the side of the highway. | |
| You look suspicious. | |
| However, if you look for it, you will eventually find county roads, side roads, dirt roads. | |
| And the majority of these dirt roads are very, very frequently unused. | |
| So what you want to do, if it's getting late and you're getting tired, and the sun has set, is find one of these roads, preferably with another little turnoff next to it, and you will frequently find these places where you can cozy up your car onto the side of the road so that you're in no way blocking traffic, you're well off the highway, and in fact, anybody driving on the highway or on the dirt roads, they're not going to see you. | |
| Keep in mind, when you're driving at night, you have the cone of light in front of you, and everything else is pitch black. | |
| You know, you have oncoming vehicles on the other side of the highway, and that those headlights kill your night vision. | |
| So, if you pull over, like, you could try it. | |
| You pull over to the side of the road, get out of your car, look around. | |
| You can actually see things, you know, just from the stars, the moon. | |
| But when you're on the road, anything aside from the shoulders is pitch darkness. | |
| So, if you can't find anywhere else to sleep at the side of the road, these are good locations. | |
| You know, on side of a dirt road, you know, go a little distance away from the main drag, nobody is going to see you. | |
| And just look at the road itself. | |
| Does it look well traveled? | |
| Are there ruts in it? | |
| Or is it a forgotten road that only three farmers use? | |
| Use your instincts for this. | |
| You know, is there, better yet, if there's a rail, if there's a rail line and the crossing is not controlled, then you know it's not a very high traffic area. | |
| You can safely go there and lay back in your car and crash until the sun comes up. | |
| Nobody's going to notice you. | |
| And finally, a bit of advice for when you are staying at hotels, when you're traveling and you're staying at a hotel. | |
| Very first thing you should do when you get in is unpack your stuff. | |
| You know, not all of it. | |
| You don't need to take your socks and underwear and put them in the dresser. | |
| Who cares about that? | |
| That can all stay in the luggage. | |
| But if you have suits with you, pull them out, hang them up so they don't crinkle. | |
| Get your toiletries and bring them into the washroom. | |
| You know, get the shoes out of your bag. | |
| Get everything organized. | |
| Discipline yourself to do this as soon as you check in because it's just good for the psychology. | |
| It puts you in a better state if everything, if you know where everything is, if it's all organized. | |
| It's keeping yourself disciplined because if you keep your place tidy, you will keep your mind tidy. | |
| And one last little thing about luggage: try putting a dryer sheet in with your luggage when you travel. | |
| One of the things that really bothers me, because I smoke, is I will sometimes unpack my luggage. | |
| And if I forgot to put the dryer sheet in, it will just, the whole thing will just reek of cigarette smoke, even though all of this laundry just came out of the washing machine. | |
| You know, being cramped up in a suitcase is not good for your clothes. | |
| It really kills the freshness. | |
| But if you toss a dryer sheet in there, it will keep them smelling fresh. | |
| So I think that's about everything. | |
| If you are traveling northern routes, however, and if you plan to be traveling a lot at night, it is definitely worth your time to get a jerry can full of gasoline and put that in your trunk. | |
| Because there's a lot of places, especially at night, where there are no gas stations that are open. | |
| And a lot of these places still take cash. | |
| So having a, and as well, if you're going to leave your car on while you're sleeping, there is very slim. | |
| Like if you just fueled up, it should be fine. | |
| Idling the car really doesn't take that much energy. | |
| But there is a very slim possibility that you could run out of gas. | |
| So having a jerry can in your trunk is a very good idea. | |
| Anyway, I hope that was useful. | |
| Drive safely. |